Workers volunteer time to feed the hungry in Fort Lee

Lou Demeson, a volunteer, serves lunch to senior citizens at the Senior Citizen Center on Nov. 14. The Center served free breakfast, lunch and dinner to municipal employees and residents after Hurricane Sandy.

FORT LEE — There was no rhyme or reason to Hurricane Sandy but a good location and a little bit of luck managed to keep the Richard A. Nest Senior Citizens Center from harm's way.

By sparing one of the borough's most valued institutions from a power outage that blacked out almost the entire town, the storm allowed the center to feed not only seniors but hundreds of emergency and municipal workers, residents and elderly stranded at the Mediterranean House, a 306-unit high-rise that lost power for five days.

"We saw there was a need," said Director Crissa Skarimbas. "We felt it was important to make sure that everybody had some food, preferably hot, and a nice, warm, dry place to stay."

Skarimbas and her staff, which includes cook Loretta Marttini, her second hand Jonathan O'Connor, prep cook Anna Hawkins and dining room manager Mary Jean Cannarsa, served more than 3,000 meals for nearly two weeks to "whoever we could."

"We were not turning anybody away," said Skarimbas. "Our stance was: If you show up, we'll feed you."

The day after the storm hit, the center fed firemen, policemen, Office of Emergency Management workers, Department of Public Works workers, maintenance workers and others until 9 p.m. — five hours past its normal closing time.

That schedule continued into Sunday, a day the center is usually closed, when the staff went to work of their own volition. They received no pay for their efforts.

"It needed to be done," said O'Connor. "A lot of people were struggling and needed a place to sit down and kind of take in everything that was happening to them... I wish we could've done more."

"I saw people coming in shivering, shaking and hungry so I went every day," said Marttini. "Every day more and more people would come in... I saw those people and my heart broke."

With the help of Councilmen Joseph Cervieri, Harvey Sohmer and Jan Goldberg and the parking authority, the center packaged 150 food parcels for delivery to seniors at the Mediterranean House.

A special bus shuttled between the Mediterranean and the center, carrying either food or elderly residents who needed a place to warm up for a few hours.

"I'm 72 years old and I never saw anything like that in my life," said Marttini, who typically serves lunch to more than 100 seniors a day. "You could see they were under a lot of stress and strain."

A meal, which always included soup, could help them survive, she said.

Along with those daily meals, the center also regularly provided coffee and milk to the community center, which functioned as a charging station in the days after the storm.

"It's a sin not to help people," said Skarimbas. "We were just happy to do our part."